Texas Tesla Tragedy

[EVS]

I have to say, how much of the fault is on the drivers themselves though. Did these guys really not think the car could screw up? Especially if they took measures to defeat Tesla’s safeguards, like putting weights on the steering wheel or weights on the driver’s seat?

Tesla might be misleading in what they call the system, but these guys have agency too. Some of the more horrific autopilot crashes over the years involve people deliberately abusing the feature as opposed to say a brand new owner crashing it on day 3 of ownership because they fundamentally misunderstood how ‘autopilot’ works because of what Tesla has named their autonomous system.

This is a partial defense of Tesla in that I don’t think they deserve the full blame - is this really so different than Ford, Chevy, BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, Honda, etc. making a street legal car capable of going 150mph+ and a driver wrapping themselves around a pole, with or without bystanders involved, when they test that max speed on a public road?

This case is somewhat extreme. Well, not so much since there are many such videos on the internet of people not in their driver's seat or playing cards with their faces turned the other way, etc. etc. .How many have not uploaded their videos and so are not counted? I don't know but that could be another large number.

There are many fatal and non-fatal accidents where the drivers were clearly mistaken about AP's capabilities. Remember the two fatal accident in 2016? This one below (shown at the end of this video) was a Chinese Model S owner's son who gulped Elon's BS (till 2016) hook and sinker about Autopilot capabilities. He died in this crash while driving his father's car, clearly not paying any attention.


There are also many cases of non-fatal accidents and non-accidents where Teslas have hit fire trucks and drivers have said, they thought their car could just drive itself. I've seen way too many videos, pictures and stories of drivers sleeping in their Tesla cars while the car keeps on driving.

We may not be seeing many such accident in the first 3 days of ownership because of a) probability of that happening, and b) Owners learning and taking it slow to learn to use the system. It doesn't prove that they weren't misled. Clearly, this driver here was also misled about the capability, unless he was suicidal.

I mean, when Musk keeps telling everywhere openly that FSD is not released only due to regulations, what are the believers supposed to believe?
So I'd say, Elon Musk's misleading stats and claims are a large contributor to these accidents.

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[EVS]

Whoa. One of the deceased was a doctor! I didn't expect this.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

The autopilot wasn't engaged when this accident happened

Maybe. Maybe not. A more correct statement would be. “Autopilot should not have been able to be engaged in that environment.” We know from other sources though that autopilot can engage in residential neighborhoods. We also know that autopilot is a name only, just as Copilot360 is. Further we know that FSD is also just a name, and isn’t in fact FSD.

I’d wait until the advance sheets on accident report comes out in few months before making that claim.

 

[timbop]

The autopilot wasn't engaged when this accident happened

Did they THINK it was engaged?
Had it been engaged just before the accident?
Based on whose word do we accept that it was not engaged at the time of or just before the accident - certainly the car would be hardpressed to phone home with that evidence just before it turned into a a pile of smoldering dust?

"No your honor, I did not commit that crime - and you can trust me because I wouldn't lie about that"

 

[pt19713]

Any person that tries to let the AP continue driving and unbuckling the seat belt surely would not jump into the back seat with alarms blasting in the vehicle.
If you haven't heard the alarms, watch this video:

If this user had AP engaged, unbuckled the seat, the AP would still be driving for 30 seconds even with the alarms going off telling the driver they're an idiot. Also, if the AP system does not see a speed limit sign, the max speed it will go is 45 mph. If it sees a speed limit sign, AP will only allow a speed of 5 mph over the limit. Again, nothing but speculation in this thread including the stuff I've posted. All of the negative speculation, no surprise, from the Ford owners. All the Tesla owners (and those who own both), are telling you Tesla haters there are multiple things in place to warn you're about to do something stupid. I'm not sure why we're even posting these things because all it does is result in 15 responses stating AP/FSD is terrible and is nothing but a menace to society. The irony in this is the fact those that own Teslas and have used AP/FSD, we're alive, we haven't killed anyone, and we haven't destroyed our car in the process. Why? Because we use it responsibly.

 

[All Hat No Cattle]

If we go back to Post #1, we find this.

Harris County Constable Precinct 4 deputies said the vehicle was traveling at a high speed when it failed to negotiate a cul-de-sac turn, ran off the road and hit the tree.

Can any Tesla owners on here explain what was moving, or holding, the accelerator pedal down?

 

[trutolife27]

19-minute mark. tell me what you think. All I'm going to say right?

 

[pt19713]

If we go back to Post #1, we find this.


Can any Tesla owners on here explain what was moving, or holding, the accelerator pedal down?

There are a lot of holes in that original article, some one which have already been debunked by the fire chief of the Woodlands Township Fire Dept. I don't know how the deputies can determine the vehicle's velocity unless there are brake marks. Even then, as mentioned in previous posts, there are measures in place if AP is active.

As Musk stated, the car is not equipped with FSD, just the base AP. The base AP in the rural setting will only allow 5 mph above the posted limited if the cameras picked up a speed limit sign. If it's 15 mph, AP limit is 20 mph. If 25 mph, limit is 30 mph. If no sign is detected, the max speed (supposedly) is 45 mph. I haven't tested this personally. If a person tries to go faster than 6 mph, they are put in AP jail and have to drive the car manually until they go into Park. With the systems in place, there's little chance AP was active and the car was driving at a "high speed." Tesla most likely has the telemetry data and that info will be released at some point. These type of high profile incidents and articles put the blame on the car and information is later released, although the damage is already done. Remember the WSJ journalist who drove a Tesla for an article stating he couldn't make it to a charging destination, only to have Tesla release the info he drove it around a parking lot for miles?

 

[Mirak]

https://www.reuters.com/business/au...esla-crash-believed-be-driverless-2021-04-19/

Texas police will serve search warrants on Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) on Tuesday to secure data from a fatal vehicle crash, a senior officer told Reuters on Monday, after CEO Elon Musk said company checks showed the car’s Autopilot driver assistance system was not engaged.

Mark Herman, Harris County Constable Precinct 4, said evidence including witness statements clearly indicated there was nobody in the driver's seat of the Model S when it crashed into a tree, killing two people, on Saturday night.

Herman said a tweet by Musk on Monday afternoon, saying that data logs retrieved by the company so far ruled out the use of the Autopilot system, was the first officials had heard from the company.

"If he is tweeting that out, if he has already pulled the data, he hasn’t told us that," Herman told Reuters. "We will eagerly wait for that data."

 

[GoGoGadgetMachE]

19-minute mark. tell me what you think. All I'm going to say right?

bUt NoBoDy ThInKs It DrIvEs ItSeLf Or GoEs HaNdSfReE

 

[Joetz]

Did they THINK it was engaged?
Had it been engaged just before the accident?
Based on whose word do we accept that it was not engaged at the time of or just before the accident - certainly the car would be hardpressed to phone home with that evidence just before it turned into a a pile of smoldering dust?

"No your honor, I did not commit that crime - and you can trust me because I wouldn't lie about that"

It's more than that

This particular car wasn't even equipped with that FSD option

 

[jhalkias]

It's more than that

This particular car wasn't even equipped with that FSD option

I am not going to call Elon Musk a liar. But I also am not putting full faith in a statement made in a Tweet.

Let's let investigators figure it out.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

I am not going to call Elon Musk a liar. But I also am not putting full faith in a statement made in a Tweet.

Let's let investigators figure it out.

What John said.

Whether the car had “FSD” or not is yet to be determined. And the fact remains that the so called safeguards for “Autopilot” and “FSD” do not always work the way they’re supposed to. We’ve seen video much earlier in this thread that says otherwise.

Time will tell.

 

[timbop]

It's more than that

This particular car wasn't even equipped with that FSD option

It had AUTOPILOT, right?

 

[Mirak]

It had AUTOPILOT, right?

I think they all have Autopilot. But apparently Tesla sayz that the Autopilot was not engaged, and couldn’t have been engaged on those roads. There’s some potential ambiguity in how Tesla’s information has been phrased.

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